Nowadays, he said, kids don’t play pickup games in sandlots or find grasshoppers in fields. They belong to a nation that systematizes everything, where gated communities teach seminars on how to make friends and walk your pets, and the once elegant act of spontaneous play is regimented into teams and leagues and schedules and rule books and box scores and rankings and coaches and referees paid for by parents who build résumés for their children.
